Dunn: GOP win offers 'clear choice'

Anita Dunn, former White House communications director, acknowledged on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President Barack Obama has faced “communications challenges” but said Democrats will be helped by the “very clear choice in this town” when the GOP controls the House.

“I think that what President Obama said [after the election] is absolutely correct, which is: He came into office facing great policy challenges,” Dunn, now an SKDKnickerbocker managing director, told moderator David Gregory during the roundtable.

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“And with those policy challenges came great communications challenges. And I think many people think — in terms of the policy, in terms of the immediate crisis, in terms of keeping this country from sliding into a depression — that this administration’s done a very good job in terms of outlining to a very worried, frustrated and increasingly angry American people what comes next and where is that better place.

Dunn noted that she “was part of that communications operation.”

“Obviously, that’s a challenge that we didn’t quite get to, as we did for the policy,” she said. “But here’s the reality, David, which is for two years, with Democrats controlling everything, it was kind of Democrats against Democrats and a referendum — there’s now going to be a very clear choice in this town.”

Karen Hughes, counselor to former President George W. Bush and now a worldwide vice chairman of Burson-Marsteller, told Gregory that the election was “a massive repudiation of the president’s policies.

“And, frankly, it’s a little insulting for him to suggest he wasn’t able to persuade us — as if we’re so stupid that we just don’t get how brilliant his policies were,” Hughes said. “No! We don’t like his policies. … The [clue] to me, David, that he really wasn’t getting the message was when he talked about ‘tweaking.’ This was not a ‘tweak’ election. This was a ‘turn this baby around; we are on the wrong road’ election. ... President Obama talked a lot about the car and the ditch during this election. Well, the voters kicked the tires, and they said, 'We're going to turn this baby around because what we got home with was not what we were sold.'”

Marc Morial, president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League, said: “When you look at the exit polls, the exit polls said something different. They show a sharply divided nation. … There was a mistake in 2008 to overstate the results, and I think it’s a mistake in 2010 to overstate the results.”

“I think the president gets it,” Morial continued. “Every great champion — every great president — at some point gets pushed to the ropes. And they get knocked out. … President Obama will get up. He will fight back. He will stand on his principles.”

Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, said: “I think he knows he got shellacked. The problem is, publicly, what to say about it. … If the Democrats want to litigate exit polls and put Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi back in the front window, it is the biggest gift to the Republican Party since the elephant. … We’re all going to sit her in punditland and chew him to pieces if he wants to talk about how he lost the election. Because he’s not particularly good at humility and contrition. That is not his core skill.”

Dunn responded: “Even with this very conservative electorate that showed up to vote on Tuesday, … there is not a mandate for rolling [health reform] back. … Republicans are now trying to create a mandate where none exists. And the reality is that the vote was very much a rejection of the status quo. The status quo has been on the ballot for three times now, and it loses every time. ...

"Let's not forget that [in 1995,] they weren't able to move to some kind of consensus until after the Republicans had shut down the government — that 1995 was a year in which Democrats [took] a very hard line with Republican priorities. Republicans thought that they'd come in with a mandate that they actually didn't have from the voters. ... And what you're seeing right now, I think, is Republicans coming in and ... think[ing] they actually did get here with a real mandate to do some things."